World Trade

Building experts declared New York's new World Trade Center tower the highest skyscraper in the country Tuesday, knocking Chicago's Willis Tower from the spot it has held for nearly 40 years and answering the burning question in high-rise circles: When is a long pointy thing protruding from a roof more than just a long pointy thing? When it's a spire, according to the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, which said the Lower Manhattan building's 408-foot spire was permanently attached to the structure and crucial to its overall character.

NEW YORK -- A panel of building experts on Tuesday anointed New York's new World Trade Center tower the nation's tallest skyscraper, accepting its spire as part of a design that makes it 1,776 feet high and that knocks Chicago's Willis Tower out of the No. 1 spot. The Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat made its much-anticipated decision public at news conferences in Chicago and in New York, where the announcement came at a building just two blocks from the World Trade Center.

One World Trade Center in New York has been named the tallest building in the U.S., displacing the Willis Tower in Chicago. The ruling was announced on Tuesday by the Height Committee of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, an international nonprofit organization. Set to open next year, One World Trade Center stands a symbolic 1,776 feet tall and is helped in the height department by a spire that gives it a decisive advantage over...

NEW YORK - It was all so simple for King Kong, the giant ape who fled his captors by clambering to the top of the Empire State Building. Back then, there was no question the Manhattan icon was America's tallest skyscraper. But that was before Sept. 11, 2001, when the destruction of the World Trade Center towers sparked a rebuilding effort that included vows to produce a new "tallest skyscraper" for the country: a 1,776-foot-high building designed to pack a symbolic punch and serve as a memorial to those killed in the attacks.

Banksy has a new calling: architecture critic. The British street artist, who has taken up a residency in New York for the month of October, has criticized the One World Trade Center building as "vanilla" in an op-ed piece that the artist claims was rejected by the New York Times. The article, titled "Shyscraper," was published Monday on the artist's official website. "Today's piece was going to be an op-ed column in the New York Times," wrote Banksy. "But they declined to publish what I supplied.

Hidden behind thickets of acronyms and gorse bushes of detail, a new great game is underway around the globe. Some call it geoeconomics, but it's geopolitics too. The current power play involves an extraordinary range of countries simultaneously sitting down to negotiate free trade and investment agreements. Think of it as EBC: Everyone but China. The biggest of these negotiations got underway this week as a European Commission delegation sat down with its U.S. counterparts in Washington.

A spire set atop One World Trade Center on Friday was greeted with cheers from workers high in the air and spectators from the street below. The 408-foot spire, draped in an American flag, brought the New York City structure to a height of 1,776 feet, symbolic of the year the country declared independence, and topped off an 11-year effort to restore the city's skyline following the 9/11 terror attacks. The 758-ton silver structure will serve as a broadcast antenna, a signal for aircraft, and for many, a resurrection of the World Trade Center.

New York City can once again claim to be home to the tallest building in the country, and the Western Hemisphere for that matter. On Friday, workers topped off the new One World Trade Center building with a spire making the structure 1,776 feet tall, symbolizing the year the United States was born. The finishing touch, performed by New York construction company Tishman, involved workers securing the final two portions of the spire with 60 bolts at 1,701 feet, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey , which owns the site.

SAO PAULO, Brazil--Roberto Azevedo of Brazil has been elected the first Latin American director-general of the World Trade Organization , the global body charged with moving forward stalled trade agreement talks. The choice of Azevedo over close rival Herminio Blanco, from Mexico, was seen as a victory for Brazil's goal of increasing its influence through multilateral institutions, as well as for Brazil's focus on a more “gradual approach to removing commercial barriers” and a significant role for the state, said Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo . At the national level, Mexico is more supportive of the types of free trade agreements favored by the United States and the European Union, who were said to have backed Blanco.

New York showed its colors on Thursday as flag-draped pieces of the silver spire, designed to be the crown of the reconstructed World Trade Center, were hoisted into the sky. The final segments were raised through sunny skies to rest on a construction platform for several weeks awaiting final installation. The spire will be part of the transmission facilities for the region's media outlets and will sit atop what is also known as Freedom Tower. At the tip will be a beacon. When the 408-foot spire is attached, the new One World Trade Center building will soar 1,776 feet above the ground, a patriotic number designed to make the new building the tallest in the Western Hemisphere and the third-tallest in the world.